The company which sounds like a sneeze has appointed President Hiroaki Nakanishi to become its chief executive officer and chairman as of April 1.

Senior Vice President Toshiaki Higashihara will replace Nakanishi as president, Hitachi said. Higashihara will also hold the title of chief operating officer, Hitachi said in a statement. Chairman Takashi Kawamura will step down on March 31.

The move might disappoint those who want to see Hitachi come up with some new directions rather than just shuffle its old ruling officers around.

HGST, formerly known as the Hitachi Global Storage Technologies unit it was bought by Western Digital, has announced the industry's highest-capacity 10,0000 RPM enterprise-class hard drive, the Ultrastar C10K1200.

The new Ultrastar C10K1200 provides an impressive capacity extension to HGST's proven Ultrastar C10K900 model and this 2.5-inch features SAS 6Gb/s interface and impressive 64MB cache buffer. Its fast 10K rotational speed, combined with all features and drive's low power, results in higher density servers, blades and network storage arrays.

With 1.2TB of capacity, the new Ultrastar C10K1200 also comes with Fluid Dynamic Bearing motor for low acoustic rating and improved data integrity as well as the Rotational Vibration Safeguard that anticipates and counteracts disturbances that can occur in multi-drive configurations and the HGST's patented head load/unload ramp to minimize integration induced drive damage. It also comes with Bulk Data Encryption for security.

According to HGST, the new 2.5-inch Ultrastar C10K1200 HDD is shipping today and has already been qualified by select OEMs.

Hitachi announced that it has started shipping its first 3.5-inch hard drives that will feature 1TB platters. The newly announced HDDs will be a part of Hitachi's Deskstar and Cinemastar 7K1000.D and 5K1000.B series.

Both drives will be available in capacities ranging from 250GB to 1TB and will feature 32MB of cahce and SATA 6Gbps interface. The difference between the 7K1000.D and the 5K1000.B is in the spin speed, 7200 RPM opposed to 5400RPM.

When compared to previous models, the new 7K1000.D offers up to 15 percent less power consumption in idle mode while the 5K1000.B saves up to 23 percent of power in idle, when compared to the faster 7K1000.D. Both can be attributed to Hitachi's Coolspin technology.

The Cinemastar version of the same drives is pretty much identical except for the A/V streaming optimization. The Desktstar models are already shipping while the Cinemastar version should be available in next few months.

Western Digital and Hitachi, announced that that they have entered into an agreement where Western Digital will acquire Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. The deal is valued at approximately $4.3 billion.

Western Digital will acquire Hitachi GST for $3.5 billion in cash and 25 million WD common shares valued at $750 million, based on a WD closing stock price of $30.01 as of March 4, 2011. Hitachi will own approximately ten percent of Western Digital shares outstanding after issuance of the shares and two representatives of Hitachi will be added to the WD board of directors at the closing of the deal.

The transaction has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is expected to close during the third calendar quarter of 2011, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. Western Digital plans to fund the transaction with a combination of existing cash and total debt of approximately $2.5 billion. The resulting company will retain the Western Digital name and will also remain headquartered in Irvine, California.

John Coyne will remain chief executive officer of Western Digital, Tim Leyden chief operating officer and Wolfgang Nickl chief financial officer. Steve Milligan, president and chief executive officer of Hitachi GST, will join Western Digital at the completion of the deal as president, reporting to John Coyne.

The company which sounds like sneeze, Hitachi, has added two new drive families to its cast of consumer electronic optimized hard drives for the growing digital video recorder, IPTV set-top-box, video surveillance and emerging hard drive-embedded TV markets.

The 3.5-inch CinemaStar 5K2000 family, which has 2TB and 1.5TB capacities, and the 2.5-inch CinemaStar C5K750 series which has 750GB, 640GB and 500GB models. Each claim to be low power, barely audible and reliable line of hard drives, specifically optimised and fine-tuned for the audio/video market.

Brendan Collins, vice president of Product Marketing, Hitachi said that DVR capacity constraints are becoming more acute with the ever increasing appetite for on-demand entertainment and the desire to store – and never delete – recorded TV shows and movies.

The CinemaStar 5K2000 and C5K750 families are now shipping to customers worldwide, although Hitachi have not mentioned a price yet.

Electronics maker Hitachi has quietly released a 3TB hard-drive in a way that you had to be watching to notice it.

The Deskstar 7K3000, has five platters (600GB each) and boasts a 7200RPM spindle speed, 6Gbp/s SATA interface, and a 64MB cache. Given that it is competing with the Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB drive with just four platters you could think it is a bit shy about releasing it.

The company may be delaying its official announcement due to the simple fact that many Windows-based computers will have trouble seeing drives larger than 2TB. In the past, Hitachi has introduced hard drives with more platters than competitors but priced them lower.

The claims the 7K3000 is up to 27 per cent faster than 'previous generation products'. It does not say which ones, but we're probably talking about the 7K2000. The outfit says the drive has up to a 145MB/s transfer rate.

The 7K3000 will not ship with an AHCI complaint host bus adapter which would allow legacy BIOS motherboards and GPT-ready operating systems to support large drives. Motherboards with UEFI support don't need an HBA to correctly recognise the drive.

The Deskstar 7K3000 series will have three models the HDS723030ALA640 (3TB), the HDS723020BLA642 (2TB) and the HDS723015BLA642 (1.5TB). No word on pricing yet.